Essay, Research Paper: Marijuana

Marijuana
By:
Mohammed Shames Al-Dain


Marijuana is a drug that comes from the plant cannabis. When marijuana is in the smoking form it usually looks like small bits of plants and flowers that has been crushed. When it is in the smokeable form it is usually put into a pipe then smoked or rolled up in paper then smoked. When made in a form of a cigarette it can be called a joint or a reefer. This drug (marijuana) is also known by a variety of other names, including pot, tea, grass and weed. This drug can also be sniffed, chewed or added to your food and drinks. Sometimes when the drug is changed chemicals can be added to it. As for the natural color of marijuana it is a green plant with lots of slim and maybe long leaves. The arrangement of these leaves is similar to a peacocks feathers only much shorter and less colorful.
This Indian hemp plant is usually found in pretty warm climates for example it is found a lot in Colombia. These are not the only places where people grow marijuana lots of people grow it by themselves in their farms or their backyard. In Kentucky farmers are suing the state because they believe that they have the right to grow marijuana for their usage. Although the farmers in Kentucky have not won this case it is still going on. When the people start growing this plant in their own houses they have to make the environment or the atmosphere good so they can grow it right. Most people growing this plant are very careful because how well they grow this plant depends on how strong the product or result will be.
Drug abuse is use of drugs in an illegal or unsafe way. The factors that lead to drug abuse are a person's problems, to be cool, to seem older or mature, to rebel against their parents, to be popular.
Although people give themselves these reasons to take drugs they don't realize that what they're doing is stupid. For example a teen smoking pot to seem older and mature what he/she don't realize is that being mature means making healthy decisions for yourself. And people also do marijuana is to forget their problems. They only forget their problems while they are high. Once the drug is out of the abusers system the problems will still be there nothing will change in the person's life. Sometimes pot only makes the troubles worse. And as for the other factors me as a kid don't feel like its worth arguing with. Like to be cool, people will say you don't have to be cool to smoke marijuana. Well sometimes the only way a person can be considered to be cool is to smoke pot. The same goes for being popular. These two things listed above are the main reason teens in specific take drugs.
Frequent drug abusers soon become addicts. To become addicts people go through a couple of steps before they become addicted. These steps are casual use/experimentation (body builds tolerance), regular use (body builds more tolerance), addiction or chemical dependence.

As for marijuana you know you are addicted when you stop taking it.
Once you make your withdrawal from it or stop taking marijuana you feel that you really need it. You feel addicted to it.
Usually a person doesn't get addicted to marijuana since it is a gateway drug. A drug that is accessible to anyone who is fourteen and older. People, who smoke pot at a regular basis usually end up taking other drugs like heroin, crack and crack cocaine, hashish, etc. When they start taking these drugs they might get addicted. Usually the people who start taking marijuana are only experimenting. After all marijuana is the number one experimental illegal drug.
Everyday thousands of people worldwide are doing the right thing by refusing marijuana. These people know that if they took marijuana they can lose friends, get kicked out of sports teams, get in trouble with their parents, get kicked out of school, etc. These are some of the things that can happen when you decide to take marijuana. And exactly the opposite can happen when you decide not to take marijuana. These are only the things that can happen on a short term.
The things that happen on a long-term basis of refusing marijuana include living. This might seem awkward but its true. By refusing marijuana you might have a better chance of living. Say a person decided to take marijuana and one day decided to go to something worse so he took heroin. After a while this person got addicted and one day overdosed and died. See if he refused marijuana he probably wouldn't have died that specific day.
Marijuana itself doesn't pose as a big threat. The things marijuana lead to is a much greater health risk. An example is as stated above. Marijuana is chemotherapeutic drug. This means that it can be used to treat certain types of cancer. The point of these past sentences is to make a point, the point is that marijuana can't really affect the body of the abuser's body since it is widely used in the practice of medicine. The things that marijuana can do to the body is as follows: make the eyes red, cause brain damage, low oxygen supply to the heart, and there is a possibility that it may even cause lung cancer.
Marijuana might not have any major long-term affects but it sure has its immediate affects. These are more signs of use than immediate affects. For example one of them is loss of concentration. A person who is high (the state of mind a person reaches after the person uses marijuana) may not be able to concentrate on one thing. This can cause problems with a person's schoolwork since schoolwork requires concentration. This might also affect a persons physical life since marijuana can immediately lead to loss of coordination in a humans body. These are other immediate affects or signs of use: loss of motivation and unusual fears of things.






Bibliography:


Rodney G. Peck, Drugs and Sports, 1992
The Rosen Publishing Group, New York


The Britannica Encyclopedia, Volume 4,
New York, 1996